Transcription

I'm kind of missing doing transcription this week, if you can believe it. I like the easy, mindless working at home. It's a perfect part time job. Reading my medical terminology book reminds me of it. For fun, I re-transcribed a recent (short) letter below. It shows my shortcuts for typing before Word translates them into their proper form. For example, "ctw" is "continues to do well." Even my capitalization will be fixed. See if you can make sense of it :-) I bet Mom and Dad can easily break my code (maybe Dad can even tell which patient it is).

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jhn xx mar 2008
c+v

djh

Name dob ctw with bt avt for bt cnv. The most recent ttm for the le was 1 feb 2008. He wbt for ev and ttm of the re. He describes no wor.

Ac od is 20/40. iop 13. Asg is quiet with ns. Df exm reveals mce and srf with fibrous ped. disc and pery are stable.

Ac os is 20/100. iop 18. The le wndt.

octi. Iaa deming mild mce, srf, and fibrous PED.

With his ic today I placed another avs ttm od. Ewp. He unimp if he has wor including sinf. He h24. He akai ou. His nxv here will be 17 mar for ev and ttm of his le or sooner prn. asa ikp.

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And that's how you type 570 characters and charge for 1,478 characters. Most of these shortcuts I made up in high school when I first started transcribing. I have many more shortcuts than shown here. Probably hundreds. Even when it's been years since I last did dictation (like most recently when I picked it up again), my fingers remember the code. Our brains are like magic.